With Udo Koch and Jörg Sasse, Portikus presents two artists working with different media and addressing different questions. In the specific ways they create forms of perception, however, a common interest becomes clear and is emphasised for the viewer by the confrontation.

The Frankfurter Udo Koch (b. 1958 in Offenbach) is known for his wall works, his drawings and plaster objects. He thematizes the surroundings of objects, objects which only become visible, as it were, by what has been omitted, thus impeding their readability. "Blutfarbene Lilie" ("Blood-coloured lily") is the title of a series of drawings and a three-dimensional piece in the exhibition. In the centre of large-formatted sheets, Koch drew the silhouette of a so-called "blood-coloured lily", its shape taken from a 17th century florilegium. He connects the outer points of the flower with lines and mirrors the negative surfaces thus created. These in turn form the basis of a further mirroring. In this manner, an organic, oval structure is created which becomes more dense at the edges. This cup-shaped construction is Koch's basis for a terrace-formed object resembling a tub made of polystyrene foam, wood and plaster. The drawings and the object have freed themselves in regard to their form and possess a new, autonomous aesthetic.

The Düsseldorf-based Becher-student Jörg Sasse (b. 1962 in Bad Salzuflen) works with the medium of photography. After still-life-type shots of interior scenes, he has in the past years been utilising found photographs which he alters in regard to composition, colouring and structure via the computer. The chosen amateur photos, which do not possess a fixed private character, interest the artist on account of their specific interplay between three-dimensional illusion, colour and the composition of certain details. Sasse emphasises and increases these aspects through his processing. The pictures produced in this way are characterised by their reduction to a small number of elements and especially by the fact that they are strangely out of focus, rendering the motifs abstract. The closer the viewer gets to the picture, the more it dissolves into fields of colour.

Sasse's manipulations thematize the artistic medium of photography. He is not so much interested in what is represented, but in the way it is represented.